Should it have been a straight reboot?

Well, not really. Previous time-travel adventures have all dealt with making sure that the time-line is preserved.

Click to expand...

I semi disagree with this. Trek has had a whole lot of different ways of time travel and how to deal with it. One of the most famous time travel stories of all, TVH, wasn't about restoring the timeline at all. Heck, it seems that if time took its natural preserved course, humanity would've been doomed. In Generations, had time not been altered, the Enterprise-D crew and Veridian III would've been doomed.

I'm torn, because I'm not so sure the alternate reality works for me, I'd prefer a straight up reboot too... but I really enjoyed seeing Nimoy as Spock, he did a great job, and his arc brought a bit of depth to the film, he was the anchor to what could have been a flighty, airy, feature... I almost teared up a bit during the scene of him talking to the younger Spock because I suddenly realized that we may never see Nimoy as Mr. Spock ever again... it was his strongest performace as the character, I feel, and it made it okay to like this new TREK.

Timelines were handled in arbitrary and disparate ways. This movie was just one more way to handle time travel. When Sisko looks at a picture of himself as Bell, there is more than a little bit of an inside joke. The Enterprise assisting Cochrane was also over-the-top.

These stories completely neglect the likelihood that even a minor change would disrupt the future enough that they would never exist at all, especially when one considers the infinitesimal possibility that a particular sperm would fertilize an egg.

I hope that Star Trek in whatever future form it may take will embrace the parallel universe approach and retcon the past stories to fit into this understanding of time travel.

Time travel in Trek more than most of the rest has been straight fantasy, but Star Trek has had pretensions of being science fiction. I'm happy that these new writers and production team honor the sci-fi side of Star Trek with a more plausible time travel mechanism.

Every Star Trek series has been a reboot or reimagining of the universe. This contrast is brought into hilarious relief in "Trials and Tribble-ations," especially in the scene in which Bashir is confounded: "Klingons, I don't see any Klingons."

Trek has always been able to laugh at itself, to poke fun at the fantasy.

This strategy of fitting the future in with the past is in the best tradition of Star Trek shows and movies that preceded it.

Often, to enjoy Star Trek, you just have to smile and laugh at the silliness beneath the surface. The augment-virus, ancient humanoid, warp-ten salamander, barclay-devolving-into-a-spider, hippie alien, toga alien side of Star Trek is part of the fun.

If anything, this new Star Trek takes itself more seriously than did the campy Star Trek before it.

Timelines were handled in arbitrary and disparate ways. This movie was just one more way to handle time travel. When Sisko looks at a picture of himself as Bell, there is more than a little bit of an inside joke. The Enterprise assisting Cochrane was also over-the-top.

These stories completely neglect the likelihood that even a minor change would disrupt the future enough that they would never exist at all, especially when one considers the infinitesimal possibility that a particular sperm would fertilize an egg.

I hope that Star Trek in whatever future form it may take will embrace the parallel universe approach and retcon the past stories to fit into this understanding of time travel.

Time travel in Trek more than most of the rest has been straight fantasy, but Star Trek has had pretensions of being science fiction. I'm happy that these new writers and production team honor the sci-fi side of Star Trek with a more plausible time travel mechanism.

Every Star Trek series has been a reboot or reimagining of the universe. This contrast is brought into hilarious relief in "Trials and Tribble-ations," especially in the scene in which Bashir is confounded: "Klingons, I don't see any Klingons."

Trek has always been able to laugh at itself, to poke fun at the fantasy.

This strategy of fitting the future in with the past is in the best tradition of Star Trek shows and movies that preceded it.

Often, to enjoy Star Trek, you just have to smile and laugh at the silliness beneath the surface. The augment-virus, ancient humanoid, warp-ten salamander, barclay-devolving-into-a-spider, hippie alien, toga alien side of Star Trek is part of the fun.

If anything, this new Star Trek takes itself more seriously than did the campy Star Trek before it.

Click to expand...

I agree whole-heartedly with almost everything you've posted here, other than the last bit. I do think this new TREK is bringing back the campy fun of the original, that's what I truly enjoyed about it. From Kirk and McCoy running around in the hypospray scene, Kirk and the Orion slave girl, to all of Scotty's scene stealing comic relief, it brought back the fun. It was a breath of fresh air.

But to go for a straight origins story would have had two big problems:

1. Canon says that young Kirk was dour and serious as a cadet. That makes him overlap far too much with young Spock. There needs to be a contrast between the two main characters.

2. Seeing the characters as we know them develop could be interesting. But seeing both Kirk and Spock embark on different arcs, while still being essentially the same recognizable people, is far more exciting.

I think we're going to see more rage and dangerousness from Spock, and watch Kirk evolve into the familiar maturity and compassion but not start out there. In other words, as Kirk evolves towards TOS Kirk, Spock evolves away from TOS Spock, and what plotline emerges is anybody's guess.

After thinking about this (a lot), I'm convinced they took the best of the three paths open to them.

Well, not really. Previous time-travel adventures have all dealt with making sure that the time-line is preserved. This one just goes "fuck it".

Click to expand...

My pet theory is that timelines can never be restored to exactly the original - that's like unscrambling an egg - so that every time Trek time-travelled, an alternate timeline was created, and we started following those characters, leaving the originals in the dust, it's just that nobody noticed the difference before now.

And the only reason we noticed now is because the writers gave the characters weird, preternatural knowledge of the changed timeline - it still makes no sense that they could step outside their universe and understand "how timelines work."

My pet theory is that timelines can never be restored to exactly the original - that's like unscrambling an egg - so that every time Trek time-travelled, an alternate timeline was created, and we started following those characters, leaving the originals in the dust, it's just that nobody noticed the difference before now.

And the only reason we noticed now is because the writers gave the characters weird, preternatural knowledge of the changed timeline

I'm glad you used the quotes, because Star Trek has never done a reboot before. RESET BUTTON, yes, but never a reboot for the entire franchise a la Batman or Jack Ryan.

Click to expand...

Notwithstanding in-universe explanations, I don't know what else you'd call TMP or TNG except "reboots." Just like the new movie is a "reboot." They've all been radical reimaginings of the Star Trek concept. They're all "Based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry." They all have tenuous links to what came before. The fact that some fans have more ease reconciling the wildly different movies and TV series than they do reconciling the new movie is just the same old broken record as before. Some fans cried bloody murder when TMP came out for messing with TOS. Some of these same fans were irate with TNG. And now these same fans are rending their hair and clothes over yet another reimagining of Star Trek.

As if that new target audience of current teens had any emotional connection to TOS.

The trailers were cool. And Sylar was in it. And Abrams directed it. That's why it was successful.

That the characters were called Kirk and Spock is totally irrelevant.

Click to expand...

But that's just it, they didn't want to abandon classic Star Trek. They hoped to bring 40 years of fans with them and expand interest to the younger demographic as well. I don't believe the "target" audience was teens. But had it been a true reboot, Trek fandom would have rejected it just like you seem to, and without giving it a chance.

Notwithstanding in-universe explanations, I don't know what else you'd call TMP or TNG except "reboots." Just like the new movie is a "reboot."

Click to expand...

Spin-off? Continuation? Sequel? Basically anything other than reboot.

Reboot, in serial fiction, means a discarding of much or even all previous continuity in the series, to start anew. Effectively, all previously-known fictive history is declared by the writer(s) to be null and void, or at least irrelevant to the current storyline, and the series starts over.

Notwithstanding in-universe explanations, I don't know what else you'd call TMP or TNG except "reboots." Just like the new movie is a "reboot."

Click to expand...

Spin-off? Continuation? Sequel? Basically anything other than reboot.

Reboot, in serial fiction, means a discarding of much or even all previous continuity in the series, to start anew. Effectively, all previously-known fictive history is declared by the writer(s) to be null and void, or at least irrelevant to the current storyline, and the series starts over.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

What is that, Wikipedia?

A reboot as far as I'm concerned is a wholesale re-imagining of a series. Feel free to disagree with me over semantics, but that's what TNG, TMP, TWOK, DS9, and Enterprise were. They took all kinds of liberties with Star Trek's values, aesthetics, and internal coherence while paying lip service to what preceded them. As far as I am concerned, they are all reboots, timeline or no timeline.

Notwithstanding in-universe explanations, I don't know what else you'd call TMP or TNG except "reboots." Just like the new movie is a "reboot."

Click to expand...

Spin-off? Continuation? Sequel? Basically anything other than reboot.

Reboot, in serial fiction, means a discarding of much or even all previous continuity in the series, to start anew. Effectively, all previously-known fictive history is declared by the writer(s) to be null and void, or at least irrelevant to the current storyline, and the series starts over.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

What is that, Wikipedia?

A reboot as far as I'm concerned is a wholesale re-imagining of a series. Feel free to disagree with me over semantics, but that's what TNG, TMP, TWOK, DS9, and Enterprise were. They took all kinds of liberties with Star Trek's values, aesthetics, and internal coherence while paying lip service to what preceded them. As far as I am concerned, they are all reboots, timeline or no timeline.

Click to expand...

Well as far as the rest of the English speaking world is concerned, they were sequels and spinoffs. Mainly this is because sequels can and do tinker with the "aesthetics and values" of a series without being reboots. This is why the Mission Impossible movies are not considered reboots, despite the fact that Jim Phelps turned into a bad guy for some reason.

It occurs to me that the only reason Trekkies have problems with the idea of a reboot is that Trek has never actually tried it before; it's never really needed to. Other series have, with varying degrees of success, and the ones that did not stopped coming out with new material. We (or rather, those of us too deep in the Trekset) just aren't used to thinking of it as a line of fiction capable of having alternate versions/incarnations that may or may not have anything in common.

Although it will be F*cking hilarious, thirty years from now, when somebody decides to do a remake of Star Wars.